Drift theory gained traction in the theory of randomized search heuristics when it was introduced to the community by He and Yao [1]}, [2]} via the additive drift theorem. However, they were not the first to prove it. The result dates back to Hajek [3]}, who stated the theorem in a fashion quite different from how it is phrased nowadays. According to Lengler [4]}, the theorem has been proven even prior to that various times. Since then, many different versions of drift theorems have been proven, the most common ones being the variable drift theorem [5]} and the multiplicative drift theorem [6]}. The different names refer to how the drift is bounded other than independent of time: additive means that the drift is bounded by the same value for all states; in a multiplicative scenario, the drift is bounded by a multiple of the current state of the process; and in the setting of variable drift, the drift is bounded by any monotone function with respect to the current state of the process.
